Senior citizen country

MALLS and shopping centers in Metro Manila during office hours, says my husband, are “senior citizen country,” populated mostly by older people walking around in pairs, groups or all by their lonesome, enjoying the free air-conditioning, the convivial company of fellow retirees, or the attentive service of drivers, yayas, caregivers and apos (grandchildren).

They even have a uniform. The hubby can spot a male senior citizen from yards away just by glancing at what he has on: long shorts or jogging pants, a collared T-shirt or faded polo shirt, rubber shoes, sandals or Crocs, accessorized with a baseball cap or “gora,” as this item of clothing is known to oldsters, and sometimes a cane or a walker.

The women, he remarks, are not so easy to spot. Mainly because many (or most?) continue to dye their hair so that tell-tale grey spots are hidden from view. Other women seniors, whether of the Cougar ilk or not, choose to follow fashion more suitable for gals decades younger. Indeed, the first indicator that a woman is 60 or older is the bevy of attendants in her wake: caregivers all dressed in similar pastel-colored tops and loose pants, young children tagging along and insisting on buying everything they set their eyes on, and a driver and/or bodyguard sometimes spotted carrying the madam’s designer handbag or else pushing along a walker in case it becomes necessary.

During the day, says my husband-turned-sociological-observer, it’s the men who seem more often in need of bonding and company. They gather in coffee shops or outside fast-food joints, making cups of coffee last for hours, trading views on current events, and sharing jokes they all seem to have heard before but nevertheless still find funny. A retired couple I know, who live in a condominium just a few streets away from Greenbelt, say they have even come to recognize many of the other senior citizens they encounter every day as they make their way around the different malls in the area. “Our eyes light up when we see each other and we nod and smile at them. It’s such a good feeling, like we have an entirely new group of friends,” gushes the wife.

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IN JAPAN, the word for retiree-husbands translates to “wet leaves.” This is because, with too much time on their hands, the husbands cling to their wives, yes, like wet leaves, insisting on joining them wherever they go. This annoys the wives who, in the years their husbands were being good salary-men, spending much of their time at work and then in bars and clubs entertaining clients or bonding with their co-workers, had learned to carve out their own independent lives. So when the husband retires, he starts following around his wife to her cooking lessons and Ikebana sessions, to the gym or the community center, to shopping malls and supermarkets.

My husband has taken the “wet leaf” paradigm into a whole new direction. He has assigned himself the role of family driver, but because he is what he is, he ends up harassing his lackadaisical family members into getting a move-on and drawing up elaborate schedules for us to follow. Often I have insisted on contacting our “on-call” driver, for I would much rather pay the driver’s P400 daily fee than put up with one more day of the hubby’s daily harassment.

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BEING a senior citizen in this country, though, brings with it a certain empowerment, mostly through the “senior citizen’s card.” Time was, when older people, mostly women, were actually ashamed to bring out their cards that testified to their being “of a certain age.” But these days, people over 60 have no compunction about brandishing the cards, which earn them all kinds of perks from discounts at drug stores for essential medicines (truly a life saver), discounts at restaurants, and even discounted if not free movie tickets.

I even overheard on radio the feisty BIR Commissioner Kim Henares pleading with senior citizens not to expect discounts from supermarkets because the details of determining which items are covered have yet to be worked out. She was issuing the appeal, she added, because seniors had been picking fights with grocery cashiers over the discounts they felt entitled to.

The only drawback of the senior citizen card is that if you’re with a senior citizen, service people naturally assume you’re a senior citizen, too. When a waiter asked for my card after the hubby had presented his, I snapped: “Do I look like a senior citizen? Just wait for a few years until I qualify and you’ll regret you ever asked me.”

A good rule for service people is: Don’t ask a woman for her senior citizen’s card unless she volunteers it. Sometimes, foregoing a discount is less important than preserving our pride. –Rina Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquirer